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Review: Black Nativity
'Christmas in the shadow of Darfur atrocities
Taken from the December 6, 2007 issue of the Chicago News-Star
By Catey Sullivan
Congo Square could have safely stuck to their sure-fire formula with "Black Nativity." Annually since 2004, the company praised and supported by the great playwright August Wilson has swept up audiences with the musical's both reverent and raucous celebration of Christmas. The first act was an enactment of the Bible's Christmas story: Mary, Joseph, the manger and the Magi brought to life through African-rooted dance traditions and a book by the poet Langston Hughes. The second half was a foot-stomping concert of raise-the-roof spirituals, Gospel hymns and familiar carols. In all, "Black Nativity" was an amalgam of revival meeting, Christmas pageant and concert.
It is still all that, but this year, director and co-choreographer Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj has shaken things up considerably, taking the audacious step of setting the story in Darfur. Instead of one Mary and Joseph, there are two: a young Darfur couple separated through violence and loss in the uncertainty of a refugee camp; and the Bible's Mary and Joseph, increasingly desperate and searching for shelter in the last hours of Mary's pregnancy.
It's a daring proposition, taking ancient events held sacred for thousands of years by billions of people and weaving them into an urgent telling of the atrocities unfolding daily in Darfur. And in this, the fourth production of Congo Square's "Black Nativity," it works. Anchored by a radiant-voiced ensemble, "Black Nativity" is equally powerful whether the scene is one of rambunctious glorification or worshipful contemplation.
It opens with a voice-over offering the horrifying statistic that more than 450,000 people have been killed -- victims of ethnic cleansing -- in Darfur, while a staggering 7.5 million have been displaced. The stage (evocative work by set designer Timothy Mann) is a harsh, angular landscape of earth-colored rafters and imposing staircases. A frantic onslaught of percussion and the space explodes, soldiers bearing massive rifles whirling around a Diaspora-in-miniature of writhing arms and stomping legs and frightened faces. And just as suddenly, Darfur Mary (a luminous Malkia Stampley) is alone in a spotlight, heavily pregnant and bitterly declaring "There is no God in Darfur."
Enter Biblical Mary (Alexis J. Rogers whose steadfast, glorious voice captures the defiant hope that defines the entire production), who along with Biblical Joseph (a clarion-voiced James Earl Jones II), the angel Gabriel (the towering Kalind Haynes) brings Darfur Mary to a sense of hope and resilience through an enactment of the Christmas story.
"Black Nativity" is almost wholly sung, and thanks to musical director Tory O. Davis it sounds terrific from the boisterous "Send One Angel Down," to the mournful "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" to the joyous "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Costume designer Christine Pascual's vivid Kente cloth ensembles pop with vibrancy (and the wings she created for Gabriel are works of feathery folk art).
Steeped in a spirit of thanksgiving even as it addresses the worst the world has to offer, "Black Nativity" is a rousing, kinetic and exultant.
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